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The Psychology of Fiction

Metaphor and metonymy are usually regarded as figures of speech. Although the terms derive from literary theory, they might be better regarded as fundamental ways of thinking, of deep interest to psychology.

Psychologists are familiar with the idea of perspective taking, knowing some aspect of what another person is thinking. Only recently have they started to investigate the idea of experience-taking: entering the experience of another.

A taxi driver drops a couple off at a theater to see a play which is a murder mystery. They pay the fare but don't leave a tip. The driver rolls down the window and shouts: "The butler did it." Did he get his own back?

Empathy has become a subject of much interest. It's of interest in fiction as we feel for characters in stories, in politics as we wonder what to feel for people in different social groups, and in history as we wonder about the emotions of people living in societies of the past.

Are stories just pastimes, or have they been important in human evolution? Are they frills, or are they like eyes and hands, useful adaptations that have contributed to the survival of our species? Literary Darwinism is a new movement in which it is argued that stories are adaptations.

We are all very good at knowing what other people ought to do. It's even been said that a pleasure that never palls is to point out when other people--friends, people at work, politicians--get it wrong.

The idea that art may imitate life is at least as old as Aristotle's Poetics, the book that-in the West at least-is the most widely recommended text on how to write fiction. It's even recommended by screenwriters to screenwriters.

Writing a novel is something that many people try, and even more people think about. The most important thing to know before you start is that you don't have a novel inside you. It emerges only as you begin to write.

If we think in the way that Lev Vygotsky (1962) proposed, mind isn't a container in which memories, thoughts, plans, and impressions can be inserted or from which they can be retrieved. It IS these memories, thoughts, plans, and impressions.

People in the humanities have long maintained that the classics of fiction are good for you, and are important in the education of citizens. In her recent book, Not for profit, Martha Nussbaum takes up this theme and argues that the humanities are essential to democracy.

There are many kinds of social influence. A parent may coax, an employer may demand, a politician may exhort, an advertiser may suggest. In forms of this kind one person knows what another should think or do. But what about social influence in which people are not trying to persuade or control?

To say that fiction is all about the emotions is probably an exaggeration, but not much of one. When we see a movie, we want to be excited, or amused, or to get out our Kleenex. When we read a novel, we want to be moved. Why should this be?

People read fiction to travel to fictional worlds, where one's responsibilities are few and one's experiences are many. But fiction also enables us to change our personality. Maja Djikic and I, together with Sara Zoeterman and Jordan Peterson (2009), showed that when people read one of the world's great short stories, changes occurred in their personality.

Amongst earthlings stories are uniquely human. Stories are deep in our psychology. But how deep? Are they a recent addition, dependent on the human acquisition of language, or do their roots go further back?&nbsp;

One hears a lot of grumbling that although housemaids are thought once to have snatched half an hour below stairs to read the latest novel by Jane Austen, now people only Google and Twitter. "It's because of technology," say the grumblers. But writing-and-reading is the most important technology yet invented. Every technology has two parts. One is external. In writing and reading it's the marks on paper or some other medium. The other is internal. In writing and reading it's the skills to make and use the external marks. Each successful technology is taken up into society and creates a new niche, supported by new practices. The technology of writing and reading enables the externalization of thoughts, and it has led to the book, which has created a niche that is still thrives.

What can a writer do to bring a story alive in the mind of a reader? It's not just a matter of saying this happened and then another thing. The way in which a writer prompts the imagination can make a big difference. There have been brilliant advances recently in neuroscience and in literary theory, which give us a sense of what happens in the brain and mind when a writer depicts actions and scenes.

Many people who've seen James Cameron's film Avatar say, "The special effects are good, but the movie is mindless." The special effects certainly are good, but the film isn't mindless. It's all about minds. The hero, Jake Sully, first enters by identification the mind of the military commander of a human mission to Pandora in the Alpha Centauri solar system, then second that of the anthropologist, Grace, who is trying to understand the Na'vi inhabitants of Pandora, in order to win them over. Third, by a piece of DNA magic, he enters the body of a Na'vi person and takes on a Na'vi mind, falls in love with a Na'vi princess, and becomes able to communicate with her mentally by a means that for humans is impossible.